Vigny, Alfred-Victor, count de

Vigny, Alfred-Victor, count de

(born March 27, 1797, Loches, France—died Sept. 17, 1863, Paris) French poet, dramatist, and novelist. Vigny embarked on a military career but turned to writing Romantic poetry; his verse was critically and popularly acclaimed. His Cinq-Mars (1826) was the first important historical novel in French. Growing disillusioned, he wrote Stello (1832), on the advisability of separating the poetic life from the political. Chatterton (1835), his best play and one of the finest Romantic dramas, glorifies the anguish of the misunderstood artist. His pessimism was manifest also in The Military Necessity (1835), whose first and third stories are his prose masterpieces. In middle age he withdrew from Paris society. His later writings include poetry collected posthumously in Les Destinées (1864).